Enjoy what you have and work hard for what you want the most

Here’s the simple truth about working hard. You will never become rich working a standard kind of job repetitive. This is not to say that you cannot become wealthy as an employee. But you cannot become wealthy by working a conventional job. If your income is set at a certain level based on the number of hours you work, congratulations, you can’t get rich. In order to build lasting wealth and lots of money, you must find a way to work on the right things. In other words, you must work in a way that allows you to get paid much higher for results achieved.

This can mean working as an employee but getting paid commission instead of salary. This can mean starting your own business. It can mean keeping your 9–5 and building a side hustle in your spare time. What you work on matters more than the amount of effort you exert to get it done. You can bust your ass for 40 years in a blue collar job that will never pay over $20/hour and you will never get rich. Or you can bust your ass for 5 years as a commission based salesperson and become a millionaire. It’s your choice.

You must make your money work harder than you do. Regardless of the industry in which you decide to earn your money, there is one law of wealth creation that is axiomatic. You must make your money work harder than you do. Whether this means hiring an assistant to outsource your busy work and focus on profit drivers or investing your income into a high end course to help you develop a new skill or simply putting your money into real estate… You have to put your money to work. Poor people spend 95% of their income and invest less than 5% (if that). Rich people—in my experience at least—tend to live on less than 60% of their income and invest 40% into cash producing assets. What’s more is that this ratio applied even when they weren’t rich.

I know a famous real estate investor who got his start as an investor when he was earning only $35,000 a year, married, and waiting for a new child to be born. So don’t think that your current financial status precludes you from being subject to this law. You need to increase the amount of money you invest each month… Period. If you blow it on things like houses, cars, and other luxury items before you have real wealth, you will never achieve lasting financial success. Until you have enough money in the bank that you could comfortably retire for the next decade you need to constantly think about ways to grow your wealth and build long term income.

You must work harder on yourself than you do on your business or career. I’m about to say something that isn’t politically correct. It’s not nice. And it’s not something many people want to hear. The reason that most people stay broke and struggle financially, emotionally, and mentally for their entire life is because they were unwilling (or simply didn’t know) to work on themselves. You will never become wealthy and successful, let alone happy, if you remain stagnant in your personal growth.

Without improving your mindset, learning new skills, learning how to learn, and discovering the myriad of methods and strategies at your disposal to become a better human… You’ll stay stuck in a miserable rat race until you die. So yes, work hard. Bust your ass for your dreams. Work hard for your boss. But work harder on improving yourself than you do on anything else. Get in the gym, learn a new language, learn about cognitive biases and fallacious thinking, learn about history, politics, psychology, and biology so that you’re better equipped to navigate the complexities of this labyrinthine life.

Learn, learn, learn and never stop working on yourself. It is the only way to achieve lasting success. I used to study 16 hours everyday for competitive exams. Every waking hour, away from books, would add to my guilt. I was such a nerd that even while eating out in a restaurant, I used to keep some formulae sheet handy. Everyone around me thought I was working extremely hard. I thought so too – what more could I do anyway? I still wasn’t performing very well (just about average). Often my relatives thought some people are not meant for the exam after looking at me.

The reality was pretty different. While I had books around me, I wasn’t completely into them – I was surrounded by thoughts almost all the time – about school, friends, crushes and what not! While you might be working very hard (spending all your hours), ask yourself how truly committed you are to the cause! Moreover, I used to get so burned out without breaks! I never felt invigorated while learning a concept. Breaks are extremely important.Also, I never focused on understanding the concepts in depth versus just learning how to solve a question. That can never work in exams. I know now that when you’re doing it right, you enter a flow - you don’t realize how the time goes. I was just focusing on hours and not on what needed to be learnt.

If this ever happens to you, while preparing for any competitive exam or working, just remember you are doing something drastically wrong. There is not much correlation always between the number of hours you spend working or studying to the output. Sometimes the answer is to just tweak the way you are trying to deal with it. Yes – you need to get smart about how you are working. If you don’t know the answer, observe and learn those who are doing well. You’ll find something you have been lacking, besides the amount of effort you are putting in.

People who do well in multiple things know this – You don’t need to spend all your time working, just work 100% when you actually are! Also, always take a step back to think if you’re working hard and not getting result. Introspect & understand what is going wrong. Do not keep slogging without changing your approach. Make a new plan and give it a pilot run for the next few weeks – you should feel the difference. We were raised to believe that if we work hard - very hard - we will become successful and we will be able to afford many things that not-so-hard working people won’t be able to afford. But, that’s not always the case. I know that it may sound a bit harsh, but I do agree with Bill Bowerman on this one:“The idea that the harder you work, the better you’re going to be is just garbage. The greatest improvement is made by the man or woman who works most intelligently.” Cheers!

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